Sieges of democracy in Latin America

The reconfiguration of the political map of Latin America, in recent years, has made visible the crisis of democracy in the region.

A crisis that, contrary to a widespread hypothesis in the last decade, does not come solely from the autocratization of some political systems inscribed in the Bolivarian bloc, such as the Venezuelan or Nicaraguan.

Forty years after the beginning of the democratic transitions, which undid the last military dictatorships, authoritarian tendencies are advancing from at least three sides.

These trends do not necessarily lead to an authoritarian regression or a transition to hybrid or illiberal regimes, as some hasty diagnoses assume, but they do place democracies on a tightrope, which hangs between leaderships and institutions.

A first flank of advance of the democratic challenge is that of the new right, sometimes called, without too much precision, “ultras”, “extreme” or “alternatives”.

Leaders in the government such as Jair Bolsonaro, Nayib Bukele or Javier Milei, or parties in the opposition such as the Republican Party in Chile, Social Integration in Peru or the Democratic Center in Colombia, have shown various facets of discomfort with the democracies created by the end transitions. of century.

Sometimes it is a malaise that is expressed through a nostalgic vision of the authoritarianisms of the Cold War or an anti-leftism with McCarthyist accents, which does not hide an exclusive agenda in the political field.

In their versions closest to dedemocratization, these rights are committed to a setback in terms of social rights, a shrinking of the State and, at the same time, a reinforcement of emerging powers, states of exception and perks for the military. , which threaten the civil pact of transitions.

The other flank of democratic deterioration is the most recognizable of the old Bolivarian lefts, especially in their Venezuelan, Nicaraguan and Cuban versions.

Although with less and less regional influence, these lefts continue to have roots in the bases of others more inscribed in the new Latin American progressivism, which we recognize in Governments such as those of Gabriel Boric in Chile, Gustavo Petro in Colombia and, to a lesser extent, Andrés Manuel López Worker in Mexico.

In some of these governments, emblematically in the Mexican one, there are signs of distancing themselves from progressivism, such as the extractivist approach in the energy strategy or the lack of commitment to environmental, community and gender policies, which not infrequently translate into tensions with the feminist, environmental and indigenous activism.

To these distances could be added a discursive, and eventually legal or constitutional, hostility of autonomous organizations and civil society, reminiscent of Bolivarian despotism, although without canceling the framework of democratic pluralism.

The third flank along which democratic instability advances in Latin America is transversal and occurs on both the left and the right.

The security crises caused by the expansion of organized crime, drug trafficking, urban gangs and migratory diasporas generate an atmosphere conducive to the securitization of politics.

Right now, the concentration of superpowers or delegated powers in the executive takes place in very diverse national contexts: El Salvador and Nicaragua, Argentina and Ecuador, Venezuela and Peru.

Reelectionism or the permanence of the same leader in power affects different political systems, with contradictory ideological and geopolitical orientations, such as El Salvador with Bukele, Bolivia with Arce and Morales, Venezuela with Maduro and Nicaragua with Ortega and Murillo.

The inability to coordinate regional diplomatic reactions makes evident continental polarization and the deterioration of integration forums.

A positive note, amid so many alarm signals, has been the presidential inauguration of Bernardo Arévalo in Guatemala, after the indisputable electoral victory of the Semilla Movement.

The inter-American mechanisms, which have shown their ineffectiveness in the face of recent political schisms such as those in Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru or Nicaragua, were able to accompany the Guatemalan process, setting a precedent that hopefully will be tested in other contexts.

The poor performance of the OAS and other international organizations, in the latest Latin American political crises, is due to wrong readings of the regional map, which only see threats to democracy on the left or, more specifically, in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.

This analytical limitation prevents us from verifying that democratic pacts also suffer when the State is dismantled, social rights are reduced or constitutional guarantees are violated in the name of national security.

After five years of predominance of alternation in power or punishment voting in Latin American elections, a phase of continuity begins that could be verified in El Salvador, Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

In some cases, such as Salvadoran, Venezuelan and Nicaraguan, reelectionism is accompanied by a commitment to absolute hegemony or opposition underrepresentation, which contributes little to the preservation or rescue of the democratic framework.

In Mexico, a powerfully hegemonistic tendency is also noticeable in the new official party, its media and its social networks.

A second six-year term for Morena is openly sought, no longer with a qualified but an absolute majority in the federal congress, with the purpose of carrying out constitutional reforms designed by the current administration.

One might wonder if, for the purposes of the successor government and its declared role in the Latin American and Caribbean region, such a strongly hegemonistic political project or a modality that grants a reasonable margin of action to the opposition and civil society is more appropriate.

In any case, for now, the Mexican electoral dynamics are very far from the inequitable and predictable formulas that, from the antipodes of the ideological spectrum, are observed in Venezuela and El Salvador.

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